Lawmakers are not above the law and beyond the reach of a search warrant

Friday

May 26, 2006 at 12:01 AM

Outraged members of Congress don't like the thought, but their offices should be subject to legitimate search warrants, just like the offices of anyone else.

Members of Congress are in a snit because the FBI raided the office of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., last weekend. The agents had a court-issued search warrant signed by the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington. And they looked only for evidence in their bribery investigation into Jefferson.

The FBI claims it has videotape of Jefferson accepting a bribe and that agents later found most of that cash in a freezer at his home. They subpoenaed some documents from his office, but he refused to cooperate.

So the FBI did what it would have done much sooner to any other suspect: It got a warrant to search his office.

Members of Congress from both parties are incensed. The Republican speaker of the House and the Democratic minority leader issued a joint statement calling on the FBI to return the documents taken from the office. They also want agents to stop looking at the documents immediately.

And the House is planning a hearing on the raid titled: "Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?"

What nonsense. The politicians claim the Speech and Debate Clause of the Constitution protects their offices from this type of law enforcement activity. It does not. It merely protects them from intimidation from the executive branch. It does not give them a blanket of immunity to hide evidence of criminal matters in their offices.

This is not an issue that violates the separation of powers of the three branches of government. It is merely an attempt to finish a bribery investigation.

It might be easier to sympathize with members of Congress if they had shown the slightest inclination to investigate corruption within their ranks or to even institute ethics rules that matter. But they have shown no stomach for investigating their own houses.

Now they are outraged that the Justice Department is investigating.

The operative constitutional principle here is not separation of powers. It is checks and balances. Congress will not clean its house. The other branches of government have a duty to do it for them.